My Career Story (MCS) comprises a self-guided autobiographical workbook designed to assist individuals across life's diverse spectrum to narrate and shape their career stories. We describe the development and use of the MCS and its relevance for all people contemplating career transitions. Results of a study using the MCS with 20 emerging adults…

Emotion permeates human life, yet receives little attention in career theory and intervention. Long seen as a barrier to avoid, recent conceptual and empirical work indicate that emotion benefits human behavior and development. Advances in the interdisciplinary science of emotion support examining the construct across differential, developmental,…

Clarification of a client's self-concept and its implementation in the world of work remains an overarching goal of career counseling. To date, counselors have largely used objective measures of interests, values, needs, and abilities in their efforts to accomplish this goal. Objective assessments alone offer decontextualized views of the self,…

A review of the 2009 career counseling and development literature indicates that the field remains vital, vibrant, valid, and viable precisely 100 years after its founding. Using the field's 4 fundamental traditions of person-environment fit, life-span development, social cognition, and constructivism-social constructionism as lenses for…

Experienced happiness and reported life contentment represent cardinal elements of subjective well-being (SWB). Achieving happiness and contentment with work and other domains, such as love, play, and community, constitute fundamental life goals. Career construction offers a developmental theory of vocational behavior and a career assessment and…

Childhood marks the dawn of vocational development, involving developmental tasks, transitions, and change. Children must acquire the rudiments of career adaptability to envision a future, make educational and vocational decisions, explore self and occupations, and problem solve. The authors situate child vocational development within human life…

Interprets the results of utilizing the Salience Inventory (SI) and the Values Scale (VS) with a 29-year-old female high school teacher. Describes the four steps of the Career Development Assessment and Counseling model: preview, depth-view, data assessment, and counseling. (MKA)

Career counselors use occupations information to help clients make informed vocational decisions. A literature review of career information reveals a significant lack of study of the visual content of career information materials. By taking account of visual images in career information resources, counselors can help clients explore imagined…

Nearly a century ago, Frank Parsons established the Vocation Bureau in Boston and spawned the development of the counseling profession. Elaborating on Parsons's socially responsible vision for counseling, the authors examine contemporary perspectives on career decision making that include both rational and alternative models and propose that these…

Career theory and practice have long emphasized person variables (e.g., abilities, needs, interests) and have only recently begun focusing on environmental variables in addressing cultural context issues. Argues that examining the cultural dimensions of social roles and values can enrich theory and enhance practice regarding life-career…

The symposium International Perspectives on Career Development included a plenary session that addressed career counseling in a world of limited resources. Panelists representing diverse areas of the world shared their perspectives on career counseling in their countries and the specific problems they faced. They identified common concerns and…

Childhood marks the dawn of human development. To organize, integrate, and advance knowledge about vocational development during this age period from a life-span perspective, we conducted a comprehensive review of the empirical vocational development literature that addresses early-to-late childhood. The review considers career exploration, career…

Cluster analysis of Adult Career Concerns Inventory scores for 87 adults revealed three exploratory patterns: maintaining current occupation, transitioning to new occupation, or innovating and moving ahead in current position. Developmental career counseling should incorporate sensitivity to individual concerns related to personality types…

This study examined the validity of using stories to appraise career dispositions and problems associated with career adaptability. Premedical students (63 women, 37 men) wrote narratives about Thematic Apperception Test cards (TAT) and responded to the Strong Interest Inventory (SII). Independent raters identified identical career adaptability…

Career certainty refers to the degree to which individuals feel confident, or decided, about their occupational plans. Since Parsons first classified people into career-decided and career-undecided groups, counseling researchers and practitioners have worked to formally assess career choice status. These efforts have yielded two generations of…